I've signed up my sons, aged eight and four, too. I figure, if I'm going down, I'm bringing them with me.

But they're starting at a new school next week, so I won't insist they replace their Angry Birds and Mr Men lunchboxes with those issued in the Raiders family membership pack. I'll at least give them a chance to make new friends first.

OK, so I'm going against the grain here, signing up while others are signing off.

And I'm well aware that when I moved to Canberra, in 1994, it was the same season the Raiders won their last premiership. The Raiders were fashionable then.

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So why hold out until now?

You could say I'm investing while stocks are rock bottom. Although, like many, I'm still to be convinced the market will ever improve.

Last year, as the Raiders lurched from one PR disaster to another, a Raiders official tried to challenge me that the club no longer needed the editorial support of its local newspaper. He threatened the Raiders could release all promotions and news material for fans via their own website, social media networking and fan forums.

The Raiders may not think they needed my kind of journalism, which tries to objectively weigh up the good and the bad - especially in a disastrous year such as 2013 when the Green Machine was far more bad than mean.

But they do need my support - as a Canberra rugby league fan.

My warning to the Raiders official last year was that such an introverted view on the promotion of the club would eventually come back to bite them on the bum - notably the number of bums on seats.

The Raiders have always had a rusted-on membership of roughly 7000, but anything above that is generally based on performance and community sentiment.

The NRL, which has put a major emphasis on its membership drive in the off-season, released figures for all clubs during the week.

The Raiders ranked a clear last, with 4541 members as of January 23 - it was 710 down on the same time last year and effectively half the 8898 members it finished with last year. While overall NRL membership had enjoyed a 9 per cent growth, the Raiders had slid by 13 per cent from the same point last year.

During the week, I canvassed some opinions from fans about why the Raiders' membership may have dropped.

On-field performance was a big one, given the Raiders finished outside the finals in 13th spot last year and suffered the club's biggest loss, a 68-4 defeat to the Melbourne Storm at home. Many could see no immediate improvement on the horizon, especially given the loss of so many prominent players and the addition of so few. Off-field performance had turned Raiders fans away. Stars Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson were sacked last year for behavioural issues.

The list of complaints was long and varied. Game-day entertainment was dull. The stadium was dated and cold. The scheduling of matches didn't suit spectators.

There was also the late release of interstate memberships for nearby fans which may have contributed to a downturn in figures.

There is no doubt Canberra has always followed a winner.

Just look at memberships of the ACT Brumbies now after they qualified for the Super Rugby grand final last year. It was the first time the Brumbies had reached the finals since 2004, but their membership for 2014 has already reached last year's figure of 8500.

Given February is usually a peak period for their membership sales, the Brumbies are targeting 10,000 members for the first time since 2005.

I've always watched the Raiders - the 1987 grand final loss to Manly, the 1989 grand final triumph over Balmain.

I grew up in Goulburn and would travel in a minibus to home games at Queanbeyan's Seiffert Oval in the late 80s to sell raffle tickets at the gate. I'd then stand on tippy-toes on the grass in front of the grandstand, just trying to see the action.

But looking at the Raiders last year, I didn't like what I saw.

The Raiders are a club financially rich, backed by a legion of licensed clubs and investments. But I got a glimpse of a club that is fighting for NRL currency.

Free-to-air television ignores them, their membership is stagnant if not dropping.

I want my kids to have a Canberra team to follow, long into the future.

An interesting statistic about the Raiders is that their churn rate for memberships between the 2012 to 2013 seasons was 28 per cent, compared to the NRL's 25 per cent. In simple terms, 28 per cent of Raiders members in 2012 did not renew in 2013.

That means every year the Raiders need to find more paying members to replace those who leave. Or they have to service much better the members they have so they can begin to rebuild.